


And there's a storm

by boopboop



Series: The Man on the Bridge [6]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Brainwashing, M/M, Past Torture, Suicidal Thoughts, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-30
Updated: 2015-11-30
Packaged: 2018-05-04 05:42:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5322620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boopboop/pseuds/boopboop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While Tony continues his search for signs of Howard's involvement with the Winter Soldier program, he gets a late night visit from Bucky and ends up making a promise he's probably going to regret.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And there's a storm

**Author's Note:**

> You might have noticed that _sometimes you can hear the bullet_ has been switched from a multi-part story to a one shot. There is a reason for this. And it's a good one. *nods* Or, well, it's a reason anyway. 
> 
> The Disney expo kinda jossed all my plans for the story, because while it's impossible to know exactly what will happen in future films, I do like to try and stay as compliant as I can to the overall story. For that reason, I had a bit of an overhaul, switched up the order of some of the stories, and the new plan is as follows. 
> 
> This story fits in after the events of _sometimes you can hear the bullet_ and _wanted men_. There will then be another one shot which features Bucky and Steve and things all going horribly wrong, and then there will be a small multipart story which should bring us somewhat in line with the start of Civil War. 
> 
> As with other stories I post, it will be public for one week, then you will need an A03 account to read.
> 
> I hope that makes sense, but feel free to come ask my any questions [over on tumblr ](http://boopboopbi.tumblr.com/)<3

The video is one of the grainiest of the lot. It’s old, black and white and cheaply made, and it’s one of the most horrifying things Tony has ever seen.

Tony has seen a lot of horrifying things over the years. These recordings, these videos, the ones they’ve recovered from one HYDRA base or another, they are a patchwork of the very worst of humanity’s cruelty. 

Bucky is the star and this, Tony thinks, is one of the very earliest of the recordings made from his captivity. 

The building they are in could be any one of a million rent-a-horror-locations. The men there are uniformed and unmasked, but their faces have all blurred into one in Tony’s mind. He looks at them and sees one generic face to represent all that evil, scarcely able to catalogue the idea that so many people could do such violent, vicious things. 

Bucky has looked terrible in a lot of the videos Tony has watched. Most of them. All of them, in one way or another. Physically broken or emotionally, small, frightened, confused. 

This one though, this one was made before HYDRA began to craft him into their weapon. If he wants to try and understand the sickness of what has been done to Bucky, his mind tells him that with the Winter Soldier at least, most of the people responsible for his pain didn’t see him as human. He was a thing to them. He was the weapon they wanted him to be. You can’t be cruel to a weapon. You can’t abuse a thing. They’d look into his eyes and see nothing there. It’s bullshit, of course it is, but he imagines that is how a lot of people managed to sleep at night after the things they did during the day.

But this is from before then, and Bucky looks so human. He’s wavering his feet in the middle in a group of men who raise bottles in celebration. They are cheering, repeating Russian chants to the sound of a drum that beats rhythmically in the corner of the room. An American flag burns above them. Below it, a second flag is draped around a straw figure. There’s a noose around its neck and it’s covered in red paint. 

The reality of what he’s seeing hits Tony hard in the chest.

They are celebrating Steve’s death. 

In the circle below, blindfolded and naked and trembling, Bucky is being passed back and forth by men celebrating the death of his best friend. His ankles are shackled. His left arm is a bloody stump. His right is twisted up behind him, bound with a rope around his neck that is tight enough to keep him struggling for breath. 

One of the soldiers pours vodka over the bleeding mess of flesh at his left side and they dance with delight and laughter at the sound of his agony. 

Tony doesn’t know if he has the stomach to keep watching. This is tame, almost, compared to some of the things HYDRA have done, but…but they are taunting Bucky with Steve’s death. He can’t watch that. He just can’t.

He’s about to end the feed when a new player enters the screen. This one is tall and blonde and blue eyed. He’s got the sharp, chiseled cheekbones and icy pale complexion to match the photos Tony has seen of him in history books, but none of them managed to capture the malice in his eyes. 

He marches into the ring, drags Bucky away from the man holding him, and throws him down hard. Bucky lands on his injured side and visibly gags on the pain. 

He doesn’t have time to defend himself, not that he could, before he’s pinned down and the man is beating him with the kind of rage and hatred that tells Tony that this for him, unlike his comrades, is completely personal. 

The blindfold slips free in the violence but Bucky doesn’t look at the man beating him. He looks up at the burning flag and the spinning effigy of Steve that hangs beneath it. “Ste-“ Tony hears him choke around a mouthful of blood. Then hands wrap around Bucky’s neck, choking him, cutting off his cries.

“That’s Vasily Karpov,” a voice says from the darkness behind Tony, who thinks he is completely justified in the way he throws the contents of his desk in the air in surprise. 

“Holy motherfucking sweet merciful-“ Tony yelps, almost falling out of his chair as he spins around.

Bucky is perched on one of the crates in the workshop, seemingly calm and unharmed and really fucking set on giving Tony heart failure. 

“We had sex,” Bucky says. Tony stares at him in baffled bemusement, not sure if Bucky is referring to Steve - in which case one hundred percent absolute yay! Or if he’s confused and thinks he and _Tony_ had sex - in which case Steve will one hundred percent absolutely murder Tony in cold blood. Or if he thinks Tony is Howard again and he had sex with Howard -in which case Tony one hundred percent absolutely is going to need a whole fuckload more therapy and some really expensive booze.

Or wait…”Karpov?” He knows he recognized Karpov the minute he saw him in screen. It’s a famous story, one Tony knows a little more accurately than most do, the time Captain American and the Howling Commandos temporarily teamed up with the Russians. “You had sex with Vasily Karpov?”

He really, really hopes Bucky is going to say no. Because if he did, before his capture or after, each is an equally horrifying prospect. 

Bucky nods thoughtfully. He doesn’t look particularly traumatized by what Tony has just been watching, but then he so rarely does. Everything gets locked away behind those cool blue gray eyes and it’s a guessing game as to what he’s really thinking. “During the mission. I was mad with Steve.”

“So you slept with Karpov?” The idea of Bucky Barnes being the kind of man willing to have sex with someone he barely knew just to piss Steve off is somehow almost delightful, despite the terrible fallout. He likes learning these things about Bucky. He likes being able to make a more rounded, vivid, real picture of who he was. Not who the history books say he was, not Steve’s rose tinted, grief fogged glasses, but the reality. 

“Seemed like a good idea at the time,” Bucky shrugs. Bucky, Tony has slowly been learning, is eventually going to take Natasha’s place as the snarkiest former assassin in their fractured little rag tag group.

“Guessing that didn’t work out so well.” Tony says, trying to stick to a conversational tone. He’s not sure why Bucky is here and not in Avengers HQ with his star spangled not-boyfriend. He’s almost afraid to ask.

“We humiliated him,” Bucky says. “ _Steve_ humiliated him. He didn’t mean to but. Steve is just…he shows people up without trying sometimes.”

That, Tony can relate to. Oh boy, can he relate to it. 

“I tried to smooth things over, figured since we’d…maybe. Didn’t work. He’s the one who found me. When I fell.”

There’s not much Tony can say to that. He says, “Well shit,” because a response is expected of him. 

“They were going to ransom me back to the US. Karpov…he said Steve would do anything for me.” So an asshole maybe, but not a dumb one. 

“Then he died.” Tony says quietly. “Or they thought he did.”

“I wasn’t worth anything anymore. I thought he was going to kill me. I wanted him to kill me.” Bucky confesses that last part quietly, his eyes wary, waiting for Tony to pass judgement. Like he possibly could. “One of the officers dragged him off me. Then they put me in a cell and left me there.” 

That part of the story Tony knows. He knows that Bucky was held by the Russians until he was traded to Arnim Zola as part of a package deal when the scientist was initially reestablishing HYDRA on American soil. He’s seen that tape before. They brought Bucky into a lab, delirious, emaciated, half crazed from the isolation and captivity, and they strapped him down, put a rubber bit in his mouth, and carved him open with a surgical saw. No anesthesia. Steve’s seen that one, too. He threw the monitor at a wall. 

“Did he know?” Tony asks. “Steve, I mean. That you and Karpov…” He tries to imagine how that conversation might have gone and doesn’t get much further than the image of Steve bashing Karpov’s skull in with his shield. 

Across the room, Bucky’s shrug is visible even in the low light. “It wasn’t any of his business. He had Carter.”

Ah yes. Because why not complicate an already complicated subject. 

“Speaking of Steve…” Tony says, diverting the subject in an abrupt attempt to try and regain his footing. When he looks at Bucky now, his face half hidden from view, the shadows look like bruises and it’s all too easy to picture him how he was then. He doesn’t want to. It isn’t fair of him. “He around?”

“No.”

“Does he know you’re here?”

“No.”

Tony signs. “Am I going to be on the receiving end of one of his very righteous lectures about responsibility and communication?”

“Maybe.”

“Great. Let’s get coffee.” He’s going to need a vat the size of the pacific. He’s still not sure why Bucky seems to think he’s the best person to seek out when he’s in a sharing and caring mode. He doesn’t think he’ll ever understand it. But, for whatever reason, Bucky trusts him and Tony treasures that trust fiercely. Like tonight, he thinks. Bucky’s just told him intimate details about what must rank as one of the worst experiences of his life. Him. Not Steve.

Okay fine, so Tony might have been watching a video of it but…

“Why do you keep watching them?” Bucky asks, sliding off the crate he’s crouched on. For such a heavily muscled man, he’s frighteningly silent when he moves. The world around him doesn’t make sounds the way it should. His boots don’t echo on the ground. Leaves don’t crunch under his feet. Floorboards don’t creak. It’s unnerving. 

“The videos?” Tony asks. “I told you I’d make sure there weren’t any secret scary time bombs hidden in that shaggy haired head of yours.” And he’s still looking for evidence of Howard’s involvement. He is still paying the penance for his father’s actions. Bucky lives with them every second of his life. Tony can watch a few movies. 

“Do you like them?” Bucky asks him as he follows Tony over to the coffee maker. 

“Coffee? Haven’t we established that I only function at twelve percent when I haven’t had my hourly rations? Okay, so my twelve percent is still like everyone else’s ninety eight percent, but still. It’s mor-“

“The videos,” Bucky cuts him off. Tony mentally does a little dance because that’s _improvement_! It’s only mental because he can’t dance. And because it’s kinda patronizing to get excited about the fact that someone has come out of their petrified shell long enough to cut you off mid-sentence. “Do you like them?”

“Not sure like is the word I’d use,” Tony says, starting the filter. 

“But you watch them.”

“For previously established reasons, which I-“

“Do you masturbate to them?”

Tony manages to spill the entire pot of coffee over his hand. “ _Holy fucking shit_ that’s hot oh my god that’s hot, pain, ow, all the pain _do I masturbate to videos of you being tortured_ what the ever loving… did I say ow because holy fucking hell.” He waves his hand around over his head, clutching at his wrist as if the pressure will somehow mitigate the fiery burn of scalding coffee. he swings back and forward between _holy shit that hurts_ and _holy shit he thinks I jerk off to homemade torture porn_. The latter hurts more. 

He tries not to look hurt when he looks at Bucky. He accepts the cold can of soda Bucky hands him gratefully and presses it to his hand and he tries really hard to understand that the question wasn’t personal. Not really. But evidently it’s something Bucky has encountered over the years. People have gotten their rocks off by watching him get hurt. 

He’s never going to get over how sick and twisted people can actually be.

“No,” he says, as firmly as possible. “What happened to you was wrong on every level. I could never get enjoyment out of watching it.”

Bucky seems to consider the answer carefully, then he tilts his head to one side and nods. 

He makes Tony a coffee, then crosses back over to his perch and this time curls his legs up underneath him. It’s an oddly childlike position but some of his most effective methods of self comfort and care are. Tony’s not about to comment on them. He’s got no room to talk. Sometimes he can’t sleep at all if Pepper isn’t holding him. 

“They took me once before,” Bucky says once he settles down. “HYDRA. We were in France. Phillips and Carter were there. They wanted Steve’s input but they didn’t care much about ours so we went drinking instead.”

“We being the Howling Commandos?”

Bucky nods sharply, his vision unfocused. 

“I left them behind. They wanted to celebrate. Be happy. I…I didn’t want that. I met up with your father. We got drunk.”

“That was one of his finer talents,” Tony tries to keep the bitterness from his voice. 

Bucky doesn’t seem to hear him. “He said to me…he said, he said _Barnes, you better pull your fuckin’ nuts up or you’re gonna lose him to Carter_. I hated him.”

“I don’t think you’re on your own there,” Tony says. He’s not sure why Bucky is telling him all this but he’s not about to try stop him. 

Bucky nods slowly. “The meeting Steve went to was broken up. They got some intel that HYDRA were planning on grabbing a high value target in the city that night. They went looking for Howard. Came to the bar.” Suddenly Tony has a feeling he knows where this is going, but he hangs on every word regardless. “HYDRA grabbed me while I was out back taking a piss. I thought they got the wrong guy.” They hadn’t though. They’d got who they came for. Tony wonders if this is before or after Bavaria. Somehow he’s sure it is after. Bavaria brought Bucky back onto Zola’s radar.

“You were their high value target,” Tony says quietly. 

“I fought back,” Bucky says quietly, “but I was drunk. One of them drugged me. Didn’t put me out, but…Steve had come to the bar to save Howard. He saw them drive away with me.” He has sudden flashes of Pepper falling, of Killian holding her hostage, of her fear as the Mandarin’s men tried to take her away from Tony. He goes cold. How many times has Steve survived this? _How_ has he survived it? How does he function day to day knowing that the person he loves more than any other is in so much danger? 

Bucky seems stuck in the memory, his eyes glassy and unfocused and his face slack. “They told me, after. That he ran the car down. The engine blew out. We went off the road. Into the river. I remember…they’d put a bag over my head but I remember the water. So cold. And drowning. And thinking, Steve will find me. He’ll find me. He won’t let them take me again. He promised he’d never let them take me again.” His voice breaks on the last word and Tony can see the gleam of tears that Bucky won’t let fall. “He promised.” 

Tony can picture it now. He’s seen the way Steve holds Bucky in his arms when the demons overcome him. It must have been the same after Bavaria. Holding Bucky tight. Swearing that no one would ever hurt him like that again. And now, knowing he’s failed. Knowing that as much as he might promise, the world is full of people who want to do the same all over again. 

Jesus Christ, Tony doesn’t know how Steve does it. 

“When I fell,” Bucky says, his voice breaking, “I waited for him to come. Even when they told me he died. I waited for him to come save me.”

This is why Bucky is here, Tony realizes. This is why it’s Tony being told these things, not Steve. Steve can’t ever hear them. They would kill him. 

“I’m sorry,” Tony says, serious in a way he only ever is when things of this magnitude are on the line. “I know…I know I’m not Steve but. It’s not just him any more. Who’d come for you if they took you again.”

“They will,” Bucky says. “I can feel it. They’re out there. Getting closer. They’ll wipe me again. Clean slate.” Part of Tony wants to try assure him that it’s just paranoia speaking. A fragment of his trauma. But in this case people really _are_ out there and they really _will_ take him if they can. 

“We won’t let them.”

“You might not be able to stop them.” 

“If,” Tony says, finding the answer in his heart, even as his head starts to point out all the ways it’s going to end badly, “they take you and we can’t save you. Then. Then I’ll kill you myself before I let them put you back in that machine.”

Bucky stares at him in surprise. It’s not bad surprise, or it doesn’t look like it. There is relief there in his eyes that they both feel guilt over. “Steve will kill you.”

Tony doesn’t say that for this scenario to ever happen, Steve will already have to be dead. he just shrugs. “Please, I could take the guy with one hand tied behind my back. I could take _both of you_ with one hand tied behind my back.” He cringes, remembering how they’d bound Bucky in the video. He weakly adds, “With my eyes closed,” and Bucky snorts at him, amused. Tony loves making him almost, semi, kinda smile. 

“You need more coffee,” Bucky tells him. 

Tony nods. “I need so much more coffee.” He moves back towards the machine and starts to brew up a fresh batch. “So have you heard from Old McBarton recently or is he still trying to pretend he knows anything about agriculture?”

“He and Nat are in Siberia,” Bucky says from behind him. Tony doesn’t look around, tinkering with his coffee machine. He needs to add a foam maker. Every time he gets a new one he thinks he doesn’t even like foamed milk but now he thinks that past him has been seriously confused about the benefits of calcium and caffeine combined. “I’m not supposed to know that.”

“Why am I not surprised?” Tony chuckles. “And Ja…Vision? How’s he fitting in with the motley crew.” Not Jarvis. Jarvis is gone. Jarvis is dead.

“He keeps beating Rhodes at chess,” Bucky answers. 

“Poor Rhodey. I should send some kind of commiseration package. Red Vines. He loves Red Vines. Have you even _had_ Red Vines? Were they a thing in the forties?”

He turns around with his very important candy themed question and pauses. 

Bucky has vanished. Gone. Like a ghost. 

“I’m getting that bastard a bell. You hear me Barnes? A fucking bell!” Tony yells into thin air. It’s half hearted. He’s not mad. A goodbye would be nice, but then Bucky skipped the hello and dived right into the personal trauma section of the night so maybe it’s for the better. 

Clutching his coffee, Tony returns to the monitor. He’ll get in another hour, then go find Pepper for some quality horizontal snuggling. 

Taking a seat at his desk, Tony does a double take. “Barnes, you sneaky son of a bitch.”

It’s not paused on the image of Karpov choking Bucky in a ring full of drunken Russian soldiers.

It’s frozen on an image of Bucky strapped down into the machine. The restraints are all in place and there is a rubber gag in his mouth. The shell shocked, vacant expression on his face suggests he’s just been wiped. 

Lukin is standing behind him, a hand in Bucky’s hair. 

And at the foot of the chair, his arms crossed in front of his chest, his expression utterly blank, stands Howard Stark. 

 


End file.
